Salinas witnessed its own anti-police riot on May 21, but luckily, the California town took a different path from the St. Louis suburb.

Salinas protesters accused police of using brutality and racist judgement when officers fatally shot three armed Latino men in separate incidents. When a fourth Latino man was shot in July, his family and prominent civil rights attorneys filed lawsuits and demanded that the U.S. Justice Department step in.

So why did Salinas' street clashes never turn into the large-scales riots that happened in Ferguson?

In an interview published by the Washington Post newspaper Friday, Salinas Police Chief Kelly McMillin said Salinas' organized protesters remained peaceful. A few troublemakers without a cause spurred the only conflicts, he said.

"We had the same thing. Bottles thrown, we had police cars damaged, we had a drive-by shooting where they killed a field worker, and a police officer was giving that guy CPR, and during these riots, somebody threw a bottle at that guy, knocked him out, while he was trying to save a man’s life," McMillin said.

McMillin was talking about a strawberry field worker, 23-year-old Constantino Garcia, who walked outside of his house wondering why there was a riot when he was shot to death.

"Even then, we did not have big skirmish lines, we didn’t tear gas anybody. We managed that night, we got through it, and in all the subsequent demonstrations, we’ve been in close contact with the demonstrators to talk about where they’re going to be, how they’re going to conduct themselves, here’s how we want to keep you safe," McMillin told the Post.

"We by design have a very low, as close to invisible police presence as we can possibly manage. Because the reality is, what we knew that night in Salinas when things went bad for us, the cops that came back in said, the people that were protesting were fine. It’s the local troublemakers, they just hid in the crowd and stirred it up. Were there angry protests? Yes. Were they all angry criminals? Absolutely not. So the protests we’ve seen have been very peaceful. We don’t have riot teams staring them down, because we have yet to be shown that that’s necessary," McMillin said.

Also unlike Ferguson, Salinas has refused to release the names of any police officers who were involved in the four shootings.

2014 Salinas officer-involved shootings:

March 20: Angel Ruiz, 42, was armed with an Airsoft pellet gun outside a Wing Stop restaurant on Constitution Boulevard when he was shot simultaneously by three Salinas police officers. Ruiz had used the pellet gun to rob another restaurant earlier that day.

May 9: Osman Hernandez, 26, was armed with a lettuce knife when police shot him in the head outside Mi Pueblo in a busy shopping center on East Alisal Street. Hernandez was clutching a lettuce knife, had bizarre behavior, and was ignoring police commands made in Spanish when he was shot, according to the police chief.

May 20: Carlos Mejia was armed with gardening shears when police followed him on foot down North Sanborn Road. Two officers shot Mejia in front of several witnesses, including one witness who was recording with a cellphone camera. Witnesses screamed at police asking why they killed Mejia. Police said they confronted Mejia because he had threatened to kill a woman and tried to break into her home.

July 11: Frank Alvarado, 39, was not armed when police shot him on Fairview Avenue near Beverley Drive. Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo said Alvarado was on parole for attempted murder and had vowed to family members that he would never return to prison. Police confronted Alvarado while he was trying to burn down his grandfather's home. Flippo said Alvarado rushed at officers with his hands together, clutching a cellphone.

Ferguson mirrored past major riots in multiple U.S. cities, most of them triggered by perceived racial injustice, or an incident involving police, in already tense communities. On Friday, it appeared calm was beginning to take hold in the St. Louis suburb.